
The most important book that I read this year was titled ‘Krishnamurti For Beginners: An Anthology’, published by Krishnamurti Foundation India. I had purchased this book sometime around 2006 when I was in Ahmedabad, and had already read it once or may be twice. This was my third reading of this book. Krishnamurti rarely fails us and always impresses us by his insight into problems and issues we come across in our everyday lives. After a biographical sketch and an outline of Krishnamurti’s philosophy by Radhika Herzberger, this book presents a collection of Krishnamurti’s writings, diary notes, speeches, dialogues and conversations. He does not belong to any religious sect or philosophical school; instead, he has a direct and straightforward way of looking at things, and through every piece of writing or conversation he encourages you to look at ‘what is’ instead of ‘what should be’. According to him, this conflict between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’ is the root cause of most of the problems.
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Today I’m feeling very light. In fact, very very light. Today I was finally able to take off that burden from me. Let me be specific. A huge pile of coins had accumulated and it was indeed getting more and more difficult to store them. Of course, I couldn’t keep them in my wallet nor in the pocket of my trousers. For some time I kept them in my bag, but the load kept increasing. Have you seen the calendars sold during Dussera and Diwali? You remember that pile of gold coins in front of Lakshmi ji? Same thing here. I segregated them into smaller piles of Rs 5, Rs 10 and Rs 2 coins and put them in different boxes. Once I discussed this problem with a local shopkeeper and he happily agreed to change them with notes. So today I got rid of all the coins.
Over the last few months we came across several news items one after another related to what could be called as ‘parallel’ religion. The enormity of the issues was such great and the coverage in media was so exhaustive that not much is left for me to add. In addition to reporting the developments in the cases, there have also been thorough analyses and commentaries on various aspects of the issue. 